By Princess-Ekwi Ajide – Abuja
The Federal government of Nigeria has warned that there may be possible reemergence of COVID-19 in the country if citizens fail to take adequate preventive measures.
Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, who sounded the warning yesterday, at a bi-weekly COVID-19 media briefing organised by the Health Promotion Department of the ministry in Abuja, expressed worry as another wave of the virus hits China and some parts of Europe, leading to lock down.
He cautioned that it would disastrous to let down guard as the pandemic could flare up in the country at any time, as witnessed in some countries saying that the re-emergence of the pandemic from country to country despite the high uptake of vaccines, still comes as a surprise and enjoined Nigerians to desist from non essential crowding and continue to apply non pharmaceutical measures, like wearing of face masks, washing of hands, sanitising and being careful at all times.
Speaking on government’s efforts towards aligning the rate of population growth with the rate of economic growth the Minister said plans are underway to accelerate implementation of fertility control interventions, improve family planning and childbirth spacing to scale up meaningful control of the population growth rate and also support economic growth rate.
Dr. Ehanire, maintained that government’s priority is to improve the health indexes of the country, noting that the Ministry cannot achieve it without the cooperation of the public especially the media, which he termed the interface between the government and the public.
He called for the Multi-National and Multi-Sectoral approaches to propelling the country towards attaining the universal health coverage and affirmed the ministry’s commitment to repositioning and restructuring the health Sector according to global best practices.
Dr. Ehanire, opined that accelareting the lmplementation of fetility control interventions, through family planning and child birth spacing to scale up meaningful control of the population growth rate would support policy goal realization and support Nigeria’s economic growth.
The Health Minister informed that Federal Government’s target is to increase contraceptive consumption prevalence rate of 27% by the year 2030 and sustainably increase it to 65% by 2050 and called for multi sectoral partnership with the National Population Commission and other stakeholders to enable the ministry achieve the intervention.
A Director from the Primary Health Care Agency, Dr Nneka Onwu, said the number of fully vaccinated in Nigeria stands at over 14 million adding that currently, the total number of doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the country is 74 million.
